ELYRIA, OHIO–Want to know why so many Democratic candidates may find it tough to win over white working class voters this fall–and why the effort is still not a lost cause in the long run?

I found some answers one warm early fall evening as I walked up and down Hawthorne and Longfellow streets in this declining industrial city just west of Cleveland, talking about the midterm elections with the residents of the neighborhood’s modest post-World War II red brick and white clapboard bungalows.

I accompanied James Hewitt, who was wearing his bright red t-shirt with the logo on the back–“Good Jobs/A Just Economy “–as he canvassed the neighborhood on behalf of two candidates. They were incumbent Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, who was slipping in the polls further behind former conservative Republican Rep. John Kasich, and Rep. Betty Sutton, who normally would have had little trouble holding her seat, but this year faced a rich Republican car dealer and a dyspeptic electorate. Hewitt, 27, is assistant field director of the Cleveland office of Working America, a three-million member community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. He was calling on the organization’s members–mainly nonunion, suburban, working-class political independents or Democrats–to support these candidates.

Once a bedrock of Democratic support, white working-class voters–often defined for political polls as earning less than $50,000 or not having a college degree–have become more conservative in recent decades, moving toward Republican candidates and more conservative views. But they remain a major swing bloc of voters, especially in key battleground states like Ohio, despite the growing importance of Latino working-class voters and college-educated voters (who tend, especially those with advanced degrees, to vote slightly more Democratic than those without college degrees).

Democrats have gained among these voters since 2006 (Obama did roughly as well with working class whites as Gore or Kerry), but during the past two years have lost much support, as the working class felt the crunch of joblessness and foreclosure most acutely. Yet many blue-collar voters may still return to the Democrats this fall, and a bigger shift to the Democrats in coming years is quite plausible, depending on what the two major parties do.

“They are the voters who have pulled away most sharply [from the Democrats],” says Democracy Corps pollster Stanley Greenberg, who has long written about blue-collar voters. “The president looks inattentive to them, and his approval is lowest with white working-class voters, who are seriously alienated from the elites. But they are open to populist arguments about what’s happening, even though they are critical of Democrats as too aligned with Wall Street, not Main Street. The Democrats have not convinced white working-class voters that they are with them in this crisis.”

‘Teach the Democrats a lesson’

“Jobs,” nearly everyone said when Hewitt asked what the main political issue was for them as they considered candidates. They inevitably expressed varying degrees of disappointment with politicians’ performances in creating jobs, followed by confusion over which candidate to support, whether to vote, or what exactly they would like done. Sutton, a staunch fair-trade advocate and proponent of the “cash for clunkers” program, drew stronger support than Strickland, whom Republican opponent John Kasich has blasted with ads blaming him for the loss of 400,000 jobs during the past four years.

“I sort of want to vote all Republican to teach the Democrats a lesson,” says Virginia Kimble, a 62-year old retired nurse, who helped organize fellow hospital workers into the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). What lesson would this stalwart Democrat (who nevertheless voted for John McCain in 2008, after supporting John Edwards in the primary) like to teach? “I don’t know that it would be a lesson, but the public is tired of not having a say-so,” she says. “I just want them to listen to the people. Obama was going to do all this for the middle class. But I’m not seeing it. Even on housing–where’s the help? Could the Republicans do a better job? No. Maybe both parties should look more at how to create new jobs and not outsource so much. It’s like all our jobs are shipped to other places so companies can make more money.”

“I see everyone around me struggling” she continues, recounting how her partly deaf brother can’t afford hearing aids. “Since I was young, I thought the Democrats were for the people. Now I know you’ve got to look at the issues. But I definitely do think Democrats are less for the people now.”

Not everyone shared Kimble’s views, even if they were also disappointed. Down the street, and to her right politically, 77-year old retiree Barbara Kolodey thought Obama was “like a communist,” but didn’t vote for McCain because “he was more of a Democrat than Obama.” “The country is in sad shape,” she says. “I think the president hates the country and will do anything to destroy it.”

Maybe Kimble, like her neighbor Paula Farlow, will stay home this year. “I’m not voting for nobody,” Farlow, a medical equipment assembler says. “I usually vote, but no, I’m sorry. … Nobody’s honest. Obama has done some good, some bad, but I’m not happy with none of the parties. I’m disappointed. He just hasn’t done anything for us middle-class people. I thought he’d be more for changing regulation of overseas trade, but I don’t think he should have bailed out the banks or auto companies, even though my husband, who works for Ford, disagreed.”

Even amid the disillusionment with Democrats, others in the neighborhood found reasons–new and old–to support at least some Democrats. Walter Board, 71, a retired Ford worker, will vote Democratic this year, as always. “My grandpa told us, ” Board recalls, ” ‘If you want to walk to work and carry an empty lunch bucket, vote Republican.’ ”

But Jennifer Taylor, 45, a medical assistant out of work on disability, is wavering on her lifelong habit of voting Democratic. “With so many people laid off, maybe it’s time for a change,” she says. “Obama didn’t do enough.” Much as she admired Obama for promoting healthcare reform, for example, she wanted a more European or Canadian plan. Nor did Strickland do enough, but Hewitt’s reminder that Kasich worked on Wall Street (for Lehman Brothers) provoked a smile of sudden awareness, prompting Taylor to say, “I’m not crazy about that.” After Hewitt urged her to give Strickland more time, she switched from opposing him to undecided.

Out of work since last Christmas, union sheet metal worker Rob Scheithauer, 30, says, “I’m just waiting for change, like [Obama] promised.” But he acknowledges that “things aren’t going to change overnight, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.” Not so with Strickland, who “needs to go.” Another member of the crucial wave of young voters for Obama, 25-year-old Matthew Butler, is mixing pro-management ideas from his college business training with his family’s working-class Democratic loyalties and his own liberal views on individual rights. But his favorable, if mixed, views of Obama’s performance don’t influence his views on other races, as he weighs his often conflicting values and remains undecided.

The problem with white men

The muddled opinions along Hawthorne and Longfellow streets underscore the lack of enthusiasm among Democratic voters, partly resulting from the Obama administration’s inability to produce immediate, tangible gains for working-class families. But these wavering blue-collar Democrats and independents also want to feel as if the politicians in power understand them and their concern, for example, about the effects of globalization.

“With working-class, non-union whites, the bottom has fallen out,” says AFL-CIO assistant political director Michael Podhorzer. “That’s a big factor in the change of fortunes of the Democrats. From 2006 to 2008 Democrats had rebounded with white working-class voters, but since the election, they’re the largest group that’s dropped very sharply. I think it’s the bad economy and the sense that the rich have weathered the economic crisis well, and that they haven’t. Among union members, the Republican message has not garnered traction, but there is demoralization and lack of recognition of how serious the Republican threat is. … There’s a lack of enthusiasm about everything.” But Podhorzer says the labor union messages at work and at home have begun to energize members.

The Democrats’ problem is mainly with white working-class, nonunion men. For example, in a Greenberg survey for the Campaign for America’s Future, white working-class men supported a Republican over Obama for the 2012 elections more than college-educated men, while women, regardless of education, favored Obama. Also, pollster Celinda Lake found in battleground states that 48 percent of blue-collar women approved Obama’s economic policies, but only 38 percent of men. By substantial margins, blue-collar men thought Republicans could better handle the economy and create jobs; by similar margins, blue-collar women trusted Democrats. “This gender gap reflects different perceptions of the role of government,” Lake says. “Women believe government could be part of the solution, but men believe government is part of the problem.”

Of course, working-class men in unions believe in and vote much more in favor of a strong government role than nonunion men. And voters like Jennifer Taylor, reached by groups like Working America or their unions, hear a different interpretation of the world, and most are open to it. “People basically are hurting and confused, not with a particularly partisan take,” Working America director Karen Nussbaum says. “Things are open. They’re not shut down.”

The millennial generation (age 18 to 32) is particularly open to progressive Democratic proposals, since they–both college-educated and non-college educated–show much more trust in government and more support (by 63 to 46 percent) for a significant government role in solving problems than older Americans do, as Guy Molyneux and Ruy Teixeira reported to the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Unfortunately for Democrats, this key group appears disengaged from the 2010 elections, despite largely continuing to support Obama.

A ‘rising American electorate?’

American workers feel justifiably disillusioned with the Democratic Party, which has grown more beholden to financial and corporate elites. (Some white working-class alienation, however, has tragically reflected alienation from Democrats’ past advancement of civil rights.) Yet white working-class Americans still hold at least residual notions that the Democrats are the party of working people and Republicans are the party of the rich. With unions or other groups organizing and educating voters, that view grows stronger.

Even as Democratic prospects for the fall elections looked grim, with generic congressional polls showing Republicans up by as much as seven points, Greenberg in September tested messages that suggested Democrats could still turn around as much as 9 percent of all voters. (See “Minding the Enthusiasm Gap,” page 18.) The winning messages emphasized changing Washington and supporting the middle class against Wall Street (although white blue-collar voters responded more strongly to a combination of supporting the middle class against Wall Street with defense of Social Security and Medicare). By contrast, the dominant White House/Democratic theme of moving forward, not going back, actually lost a few voters.

In the long run, the prospects are promising for a more progressive white working class, since young people, both working- and middle-class, hold more pro-government views. They will be joined by what Greenberg calls the “rising American electorate” (single women and people of color, in addition to youth), who share high expectations for government.

Of course, none of these nascent trends will matter if Democrats fail to be the agent of working- and middle-class hopes. This fall, the pressing issue for Democrats is not long-term demographics but how to mobilize the disillusioned progressive potential that still exists, despite the deep swing against their party, on Hawthorne and Longfellow Streets all over the country.

David Moberg, a senior editor of In These Times, has been on the staff of the magazine since it began publishing in 1976. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. He has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy. He can be reached at [email protected]

its all about the people mind status, if we jus help each other being human. that would precisely help us.
[URL=http://www.blitzbeats.com/rb-beats/]R&B Beats[/URL] , [URL=http://www.blitzbeats.com/free-rap-beats/]Free Rap Beats[/URL] ,
[URL=http://www.blitzbeats.com/download-instrumentals/]Download Instrumentals[/URL]Posted by blitzbeats635 on 2011-02-02 09:45:07

First , lets get something straight Randolph jr. ; black folks led the way on civil rights legislation , not Democrats not Republicans , Afrikans from amerika fought for and brought about the social and civil rights movement in amerika...I always find it interesting when white folks talk or write about amerikan social movements and totally leave Afrikans from amerika out of the conversation....Interesting indeed ? ? ?
Now secondly , the so-called working class white folks are like most amerikans ; grossly misinformed...This is why as a group they have repeatedly voted for George Bush , regardless of the fact that Bush is the one that put them in the unemployment line...
Additionally , when Bush came up with this nucklehead idea of a war on so-called terror...Working class whites allowed their children to be the cannon fodder....None of Bushes children is serving in combat...
Lastly , this Christmas , shoppers went out and spent a record breaking amount of money ; during a recession , mind you...
Now one minute folks are crying bloody murder about jobs, and blaming Obama for their situation...And the next , they are spending like there is no tomorrow...How in the hell do they expect to get the respect of the oligarchy , when you act like a dumbass...
Big corporations watch those sales numbers closely because Christmas is when they make all their money back from their investments....
Long story short ; if you spend , the rich don't listen ; if you don't spend , the rich have got your ear...Hit the oligarically wealthy where it hurts; THEIR WALLETS , and christmas is the one time of the year when the working classs has the oligarchy by the BALLS !!!
But every year you numbskulls let them off ....
My prediction for this coming year is more of the same NONSENSE ,cause the rich have no reason to respect the concerns of working people regardless of were you fit into the so-called demographic pie...Posted by blackhorse on 2010-12-29 13:39:56

Cabby,
I know we've disagreed on this simplistic view before...
"But it is the GOP, not the Democrats, that sold out the white working class…to big business and the rich. ", but I must repeat:
Just not so.
This came about with Republican and Democrat Presidents and with either party controlling Congress. There is no social redeeming value for Democrats or Republicans. We need a third party representing us for a change.
Over a period of decades bipartisan cooperation with both big business and big labor American jobs were sold to the lowest bidders in the world.
"The problem for the middle class is not taxes. And unlike the 1970s, when inflation reached double digit peaks of 14%, there has been low inflation and relative price stability over the past 25 years. Yet the national median income in 1970 was higher than it is currently in constant dollars. In other words, $12,000 in 1970 purchased far more than $50,000 does today despite low inflation and even a trend in disinflation over the past two years."
Low inflation is a myth.
The destruction of the dollar has been 50% in the first decade of this century.
As for the 1970s Median Income see:
http://www.census.gov/prod/3/98pubs/p23-196.pdf
Look how the number of people working per household increased while household income barely moved.
Under both major parties money center banks were allowed to increase margins and get rid of regulation designed to prevent another Great Depression.
The election has changed nothing and unless people continue to protest it will not change.Posted by whattheheck on 2010-11-03 05:35:29

I don't mean to sound "elitist" but the white working class vote has been a lost cause for the Democrats and progressives since Reagan's election in 1980. The GOP propagandists did a real job on them with their claims of how the Democrats are no longer the party of the working class but of fringe extremists and subculture groups whose interests are remote at best from that of the US middle class.
But it is the GOP, not the Democrats, that sold out the white working class...to big business and the rich. Far from taxing the middle class to pay for poor people's transfer payments, which have been cut back substantially, all classes have seen a downward shift in their effective rates of taxation. Before 1980, households whose annual income hovered around the national median tended to pay over 15% of their annual income in federal personal income taxes alone; some paid nearly 20%! Today, those earning around $50,000 per year pay much less. According to the CBPP;
"A family of four in the exact middle of the income spectrum will pay only 4.6 percent of its income in federal income taxes this year, according to a new analysis by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center. This is the second-lowest percentage in the past 50 years...Middle-income households are paying overall federal taxes — which include income as well as payroll and excise taxes — at or near their lowest levels in decades, according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)...Households in the middle fifth of the income spectrum paid an average of 14.2 percent of their income in overall federal taxes in 2006, the latest year for which data are available, according to CBO. This is just slightly above this group’s effective tax rate of 13.8 percent in 2003..."
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151
The problem for the middle class is not taxes. And unlike the 1970s, when inflation reached double digit peaks of 14%, there has been low inflation and relative price stability over the past 25 years. Yet the national median income in 1970 was higher than it is currently in constant dollars. In other words, $12,000 in 1970 purchased far more than $50,000 does today despite low inflation and even a trend in disinflation over the past two years.
The problem is stagnating real middle class income and wages. More than two-thirds of all the income growth over the past ten years went to the top 1% of households. Most of the growth over the past three decades went to the top quintile as well. The GOP created vast income and wealth inequalities. It is the Democrats that want to reverse this economically damaging trend.Posted by cabdriverinchicago on 2010-11-02 18:45:00

Richard Lewis Randolph, Jr.,
"As to free trade, there is none. "
I agree as to official, legal trade. However, ultimately supply and demand will overcome all the tinkering with currency values, taxes, tariffs or whatever.
My son was in the Soviet Union with his high school class in 1984. Nearly 70 years of central managed economy had unwound to the point that it was joked about by the people and alternative economies took over,
Levis, Elvis recordings and western news magazines could buy things Rubles could not.
We are about to see similar things here — bartering may become far more normal —" I'll mow your lawn for some of your veggies."Posted by whattheheck on 2010-10-25 15:30:25

The Tea Party is merely a group of Americans who have gathered together to express concerns about the generational theft of the huge, and growing, deficit, and to stop the spending, as well as, as the title implies "Taxed Enough Already", to lower taxes and allow the people to spend us out of the recession.
Sir Winston Churchill stated that for a government to spend it's way out of a recession is like standing in a bucket and trying to lift yourself by the handle. The government can only perpetuate a recession by doing that; the depression of the 30's proved that. Jonathan, you will not hear anything from the Tea Party vis-a-vis coherent strategy on free trade. It is not what they are about. It is not a political party, but has members from both parties as well as independents concerned with the spending, plain and simple. That is their only concern.
As to free trade, there is none. The tariffs and duties other nations put on our goods price U.S. products out of the foreign marketplace, in everything except military equipment. The idea of free trade, in the minds of our trading partners is, we are free to sell on your markets, but you can't afford to sell here.Posted by Richard Lewis Randolph, Jr. on 2010-10-25 12:28:41

Jonathan Wong,
"I haven’t heard any coherent strategy from the Tea Party on free trade a.k.a. global labor arbitrage yet. "
There is no real party in the sense of the Republican or Democratic parties. No national chairman or structure which can encompass such a diverse collection.
IMO they are as diverse as the colonists must have been. Think of the craftsmen in Philadelphia or Boston, the farmers throughout the stretch from Maine to Virginia, landowners and laborers — I see this as a wide ranging cross section of people who know they once had it much better and realize they've been boondoggled by an elite bunch of crooks.Posted by whattheheck on 2010-10-25 06:18:27

I haven't heard any coherent strategy from the Tea Party on free trade a.k.a. global labor arbitrage yet. The TP has to stay quiet on free trade just long enough to string along the Chamber of Commerce GOP. Then they have two years to exploit the unemployment situation, foreclosure-gate or the next crisis to turn against the surviving zombie banks and revive Glass Steigel. For now, the anti-NAFTA, close-the-Fed, arrest Bernake narrative exists within the paleo-con/conspiracist wing. While overtly protectionist legislation may not survive committee, Chinese industry can be easily de-stabilized asymetrically (Obama having White House dinner with the Dalai Lama for example, or siding with China's neighbors in maritime disputes or translating 1900's anarchist tracts for the Chinese audience to incite labor unrest, etc.); Chinese supply chains can be made unreliable with political uncertainty and social unrest. The more belligerent Beijing gets, the more difficult it is for legislators to justify free trade. The US cannot make multinational companies willingly step away from global labor arbitrage but we can create chaotic conditions were capital will flee to safety and re-industrialize in America: collapse of exchange rates, non-confidence in off-shore banking and sovereign debt default. This may buy us a few years of recovery but if we don't get our own Social Security/Medicare/Pension situation in order, global capital will divest again to Brazil, India, Indonesia or wherever.Posted by Jonathan Wong on 2010-10-24 08:58:15

“The muddled opinions along Hawthorne and Longfellow streets underscore the lack of enthusiasm among Democratic voters, partly resulting from the Obama administration’s inability to produce immediate, tangible gains for working-class families.”
Muddled? The working class are still waiting for the money. Wall Street got their bailouts immediately and are back to their old games with Obama’s blessings . There are still Katrina refuges waiting in trailer camps who will never be able to move back into their homes.
What kind of jobs are going to return in a war economy? The national security state has pumped itself up to levels beyond the good old balance of terrors days when we faced the USSR. We have billions being pored into the war machine and war garrisons all over the planet. How naïve to believe that the working class will get jobs under Obama or any Republican administration.Posted by da vinci on 2010-10-23 02:31:08

A major problem with this article; it's incorrect, historically speaking It comments about some of Republican ire being directed at Democrat advances in civil rights. If the record be examined, all the major civil rights legislation has been proposed by Republicans and fought by Democrats. The only place where the statement could possibly hold true is that the Republicans, after passing the legislation, then told minorities, okay, now, go get jobs, be good, hard-working tax-paying citizens. The Democrats told them, NO, no need to get jobs and work, we'll give you these handouts, and buy your loyalty forever. Examine history, and the Democratic stance on civil rights is not good, not good at all.Posted by Richard Lewis Randolph, Jr. on 2010-10-22 04:16:15

Dave, would you like to buy a bridge? It's called the Brooklyn Bridge. Great price! Your column tells me you'd be an easy sell.
Election Day 2010 is a goner for you Dem daydreamers.
See you in November!Posted by Jack Davis on 2010-10-21 13:01:43

CORRECTION: (edit not working)
The 2004 American Jobs Creation ActPosted by whattheheck on 2010-10-20 05:17:56

"Maybe Kimble, like her neighbor Paula Farlow, will stay home this year. “I’m not voting for nobody,” Farlow, a medical equipment assembler says. “I usually vote, but no, I’m sorry. … Nobody’s honest."
I know the feeling.
But I will vote AGAINST someone if not for anyone.
In 1993 when NAFTA was being considered I wrote everyone I could think of who might be able to stop it. It was my sincere belief it would not just take "the low-end jobs" as was advertised.
The AFL-CIO replied to my letter, "You take care of your business and we'll take care of ours". There was little or no resistance to the bill.
Since then both parties have passed legislation to encourage off-shoring US jobs. The 2001 American Jobs Creation Act sounds good, but was essentially a tax break for big business to bring foreign profits home — NO requirement for jobs to be added in this country was included.
George H.W. Bush promoted the bill, Clinton rammed it through and neither W nor Big O did anything to save jobs.
Think what could have been done with the Bush/Obama TARP & Bonuses tax dollars to rebuild America's bridges, highways and rail system — JOBS!Posted by whattheheck on 2010-10-20 05:16:12